Having recently re-subscribed to the “Less is best” school of life grad program, here is my burn out—I mean — burnt offering for the coming holidays. These are the things which can still make me laugh out loud, long and so hard, I risk a ruptured gut. Pretty sure you’ll agree.

My life is finally one with the universe. Well, the universe as I perceive it anyhow. Spike Lee, peanut head film auteur & Knicks fan, spoke out recently—no breaking news there, he does it a lot. That he called the works of Tyler Perry buffoonery, suggesting it was setting the cause of African-Americans back faster than Oprah can load a dish at an all you can eat buffet, is the shocker. Not sure I can live in a world where Spike Lee and I agree, so I’ll add the following—Tyler Perry is setting the entire human race back. Now that’s a race problem!

Perry’s partner in a recent movie release, Winfrey, has announced she’ll be ending her TV show in 2011. This one made me laugh so hard I might have to sue her for the sutures my sides required. 2011?!… Hold on, maybe she knows something! [see below] Regardless, she’ll no doubt pull a Leno and turn up on a night time version. Let’s see, I bet it will be called O! What a Night. I like O! What a Load.

The 2009 Major League baseball season ended the way it always should, so no gloat-fest here. Two things do need addressing. One is the phrase “bought players.” Teams sign players to contracts—- often for huge money. Yes, they all have the option to do so. While the jaded fan may choose to esteem that process as “buying,” they are morons. Abe Lincoln freed the slaves with that old Emancipation Proclamation. Nobody ain’t buyin’ nobody no mo’. To claim the Yankees bought C.C. Sabathia is racist. BTW did I mention THE YANKEES WIN! THE_UHHHHHHHHH YANKEES WIN!!

As for Bud Selig, 80 year old used car salesman/baseball commissioner (@ $20 million per annum). He just noticed the time lag between playoff games is a bit extreme. Wow! 20 mil doesn’t buy the quality brains does it. Of course, LA of A Angels manager of the year Mike Scioscia complained about it. Mainly due to the Angels losing. If Yankees mgr. Joe Girardi had bitched, a fresh round of anti-NYY sentiment would have filled the airwaves in red hot parallel pinstripes to the yowls of “Yankees bought another World Series” bullshit. Those fellas need some new slogans. I have one for them — STFU.

Read some history you a-holes. Sports has always been this way. You can’t sit around smugly saying life ain’t fair – deal with it to people having a rough time of it now- and then cry when your team gets whupped. Mainly because they are cheapskates. Why doesn’t Selig donate 18 or 19 million of his take, to the team with the worst record each year, so they can S I G N a big time free agent. AS if that alone assures anyone of positive results. MLB needs a major league overhaul, with a tier & rewards system for team performance. They won’t do it, because suits like Pud & his cronies like it the way it is-stoopit. Don’t blame the Yankees, blame the owners of all the other teams. But you won’t.

Nobody cries but NYY fans when tyro low payroll teams like the Florida Marlins & Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Yankees on a fluke & their owners bank the cake for trophy wives and ocean front property in Palm Springs. Oh! then it’s David v. Goliath and if it’s like a story in the Bible, it’s good enough for Joe Redass. When did douche baggery start ruling the world?

Which dovetails, in an un-dove like way to a socio-religious aspect of the current flick 2012. Seems they are ecumenical in their destruction of world religious symbols. Oh wait, they forgot to blow up any Islamic sites. Wouldn’t want to offend those clowns. Now I think of it, they do a pretty good job of blowing up the world themselves, literally and figuratively. If somebody told them the truth about the virgins (actually it’s a box of raisins – you could look it up), do you think they’d do that reprehensible shameful Bombing for Allahs trick? Still, all that doesn’t excuse the P.C. pandering of the film makers. Weak. Very.

Continuing on in the weak dept., there is a sports talk host on WFAN, New York City. The guy is a man of the people type, he speaks English natively, but he mangles it grammatically. He can barely speak a sentence without stammering and repeating words. Was this a pity hire? Hey! that’s fine on some small radio station in the sticks, not on the seminal sports powerhouse, in the world’s largest and most influential media market. The worst part is, a typical sports talk show attracts limited intellect callers. This guy’s audience takes it to a new low, the mouth breather boxing fans are the most virulent. He’s on now like 8 nights a week. Can anyone say—video of suits with donkeys?

It’s obvious, I’m thankful for all the laughter this has all brought me. I’m looking forward to all the swell things 2010 will bring. After all, we’re at the 2 year warning—the Mayan Calendar ends in 2012. Anybody else notice it’s “the Calendar?” My @#%&*! calendar ends every year. My only hope is every year would end with-

It is 12:55PM Saturday, on Memorial Day weekend! and both ESPN Radio & Fox Sports Radio are talking football. This is why I hate sports talk radio & why Bud Selig should be fired then executed. Bad bad bad job Bud. Those humps should be talking your sport—baseball. Wow, are you happy taking a back seat to that crap Bud, it’s MLB’s time of year for fuck’s sake. You should be locked in the trunk & a baseball bat should have been applied liberally by Joe Pesci.

Deplorable how those jock sniffers in the media ass kiss the NFL. They are a bunch of [deleted by the Women’s League for Blog Decency—sponsored by the NFL]

It seems Manny being Manny was aided and abetted by performance enhancing substances†[please see below]. All those clutch, drop the Yankees hits while with the Boston team, were bullshit. Now, while that city and its players enjoy the rewards their envy and hypocrisy continue to provide them, they need to admit they are phonies. If they can hate on and gloss the NYY as the evil empire, riddled with cheaters, then they themselves are surely the Weasel World of sports. Yankees suck? you m*****r f****rs suck and blow.

I have been watching, and for a short youthful period, playing baseball since 1956. I steeped myself in the game via what media was available then— TV, radio, books, magazines and baseball cards. It never seemed enough—sure baseball was talked year round—with friends. Nothing like the current media, carpet bombing 24 hours a day, seven days a week; pervasive and invasive coverage. Really, it’s too much. It encourages excesses and it gets them. From everyone involved.

Too much and yet the magpies who pass for talk show hosts on all sports radio outlets, discrete team owned tv, and networks like ESPN & Fox, turned a sycophantic blind eye to some tried and true practices. Amphetamines before games and shopping trips after—lining up groupies for stars. AND the last 20 plus seasons of slowly unfolding revelations of anabolic steroids and human growth hormones (HGH)usage by the big names of the big leagues.

It has resulted in the breeding of hack writers such as Selena Roberts (Sports Illustrated) who indicted the Duke Lacrosse team for party fouls at the rapist level before they were found NOT guilty*, to her present exposé book of Alex Rodriguez. These jock sniffing carrion eaters turn on you faster than a whirling dervish and they care not a whit if they are subsequently off the mark. The bullshit “court of public opinion” is the demographic they court. The lowest common denominator, once the exclusive stained and chawn turf of the National Enquirer, a newspaper no self respecting journalist would’ve been employed by when I was in J school, is catered to via sensationalism passing for reporting and writing.

It has also grown the barely literate radio talk host, most of whom have never read a book. If they have, it was about sports and no doubt, at the level of a fifth grader. Video games began cutting into the sports dollar heavily during the eighties and in some cases supplanted it for youth recreational time and bucks. The spawn of gamers are the announcers of today’s media. Dumb as rocks without the charm and personality. The majority of athletes, even less so. Easy to see how in this environment a clownish thug such as Manny Ramirez can thrive and pull the double-knit polyfiber over the eyes (and the limited intellect within their heads) of the feral media. One moment they are sucking up, the next, sucking the life out of their prey—the superstar, over paid and undereducated.

Major league baseball itself is led by a septuagenarian former team owner and used car salesman. He needs to step down; he never should have been there to need to do so. Baseball needs restructuring, it is at once archaic and contemporary, the new parts grafted on top of its decay, an aging Hollywood actor made of plastic. A Joan Rivers face, attempting to deceive the world into thinking she’s Megan Fox. A world moving so fast, it almost works—one because even if they had attention spans, most humans own the observational skills of two year olds.

No Boston fan will ever own up**—Manny ain’t theah prawblem anymore. I’m sure they’ll say he never got caught copping ‘roids down by the Charles River. He is however, the true face of the MLB, smug and bloated, and they only suspend him for 50 games? ha ha ha. Manny loves a vacation, he comes back well rested (pumped full of some new undetectable designer dope) for the stretch run and leads a slumping LA to the playoffs again. This is almost a strategic gift! Blow up baseball and bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn—if you rebuild it they will come. But you won’t, you’re too fucking stupid. And so are your ugly, dumbass friends.

† Ramirez tested positive for a female(!) fertility drug HCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. HCG is popular with some steroid users because it can mitigate the side effects of ending a cycle of the drugs. Going off steroids can stop testosterone production, decreasing sperm count & shrinking testicles. Manny apparently wants to maintain those big balls as well as cheat…

* Niether Roberts nor SI printed a retraction—creeps.

** Denis Leary, Doris Kearns Goodwin & Jonathan Schwartz might, but they are exceptions because they are exceptional.

** Simon Pegg appears as Scotty in the new Star Trek movie—Alvin & the Chipmunks reference 110% gratuitous, though a nuts connotation is implicit

A new book and a report came out this week. The book tells all the ” bad ” things the Yankees have done from their ownership on down to apparently any one in a third world country who wears a donated cap with the white interlocking NY & deals dope to 4 year olds. The other, published the payroll numbers of the team versus the Boston Red Sox expenditures for the same period. Big revelation is—Yankees spent a lot more to win 2 World Series than the angelic Red Sox. Careful all you chowdah come lately saints—the more popular you get, the more pimps in Argentina will be sporting that B.

The New York market, which is international, generates ( or did ) a lot of money, a lot being a technical term. It also costs more to do business & live there than most of the world. Boston isn’t far behind in COL. But, and believe me they know it, they are not New York City. They are also rife with provinciality, social conflict, corruption and a disproportionate amount of dumbass white guys. As Patrick Ewing, former NBA center & amateur economist once said- We make a lot of money. We spend a lot of money too. Bean counting in Beantown is just another way to say—

Hating the Yankees and needing to point out they spent more than you, is like picking on your brother the doctor. Or your brother the Yankee. If he makes more money than you do and spends more than you because he has it, you may choose to dislike him for it. But it is you who are the envious little jag off. Until you need a loan from him. Then, you are a hypocritical little jag off. The Major Leagues could not go a season without revenue from the NYY. I’d love to see Boston pick up the slack. Hold on, I might need my brother the doctor, I just laughed so hard, I hurt myself.

The holier than thou Yankee bashing by haters in the media is just pathetic. How about this one. The Bostons beat the Yankees in 2004. They call it the “greatest choke of all time.” Well, if the other team chokes, it means they beat themselves somehow and were incapable of winning. And you were the lucky recipient, being the other team. It wasn’t that you were so outstandingly good. Just good at taking advantage. Like stealing the wallet of a passed out drunk guy. Which is the second most popular activity in Boston. First is hating the Yankees. Rooting for the Sawks comes in third. Even that depends on how well they are doing.

The Bled Sox made it back to the World Series in 2007. How many players from the hero-ick ( sic )04 were on that WS 25 man roster? Wait for it— 6. Nineteen people were no longer welcome in the pap-bull city. That is a 76% reduction!— only 3 seasons removed, literally, from their glory. Gee, golly. Wha hoppen Martha? Yet these petty and vulgar wannabes ignore that as they continue to revile all things New York Yankees. Here’s some simple reading <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801509.html&gt;. Facts is facts.

Oh yeah, how many players will be on the 2009 Rat Sox roster from their revered ( or is that a-dawesed—-they are still sorting that myth out ) 2004 bunch? Two. You could look it up. AND then shut up.

The abstract saw of infinite monkeys, given infinity to do so, who would randomly & eventually type out Shakespeare’s works, cannot be proved. Not by me any how. I also wonder, would that appear in contemporary English? the original 16th Century? or in basic monkey? Either way, I’d still only like the comedies. . ..

I know for sure what would happen if you gave say, 3 monkeys a broadcasting school. They’d turn out the clowns who end up as sports talk hosts. I just know there is a secret text these guys all have read to them. They all mispronounce the same words & have the identical world view. Sports is their entire life & their livelihood. Yet every chance they get, they state in very serious tones, sports is the toy box. Ha ha it’s not a real job. Do they get paid in Monopoly money? Seems to me when a 400lbs. lineman hits a quarterback, it feels seriously like real life. Plus if you decide not to show up for your not real job, you will not get paid. Really.

” Men, playing boys games “, is a huge favorite. When in fact, for the most part, it is older ( + fatter ) men drooling over younger men, who they live vicariously through, exploit & get paid to do it too. There are always exceptions in life. Sure, some ex-jocks are excellent commentators. Some, jock wannabes, are even better. But the need for the type has expanded exponentially with the success of all sports talk radio. Though it existed in both major & small markets for years, the summer of 1987, a small company named EmmisBroadcasting ( which means – truth in Yiddish ) took a huge risk, WFAN AM in New York went on air, making sports talk an around the clock format. It paid off; and then it took off. To say I didn’t listen avidly then & like it, would be a lie. Now we reap the whirlwind of the worst of its spawn, ESPN Radio & Fox Sports Radio. Yeah yeah, ESPN TV was on cable before FAN launched. Whole other beast. The Worldwide Leader in Being NFL & Boston Butt-boys didn’t get into radio until they saw what Mike & his ex, Mad Dog were billing in NYC. Even then, they waited for Disney dollars. And that’s the emmis.

Now, jock talk pollutes the commercial airwaves. Since the mid-seventies AM radio stations needed sports, any sports to stay in business. Big market operations competed for the pro teams. Regional settled for being on the network & getting area colleges ( and high schools!)—lots of fights there for the share of the ad bucks too. The latter eventually put me out of radio. I think collegiate sports should be for students, their families & staff. Not fat white guys in suits & ties. Or morons who can’t even spell university, spewing stats in the middle of the night, laying bets with gamblers. Leads to all kinds of nasty behavior. Namely, more of the same.

Am I bitter? yes. Do I understand? yes. Would I still hear sports talk hosts for the barely literate & limited intellects they are, even without the personal grudge? Oh yeah, I would. If I mispronounced a local name wrong, I got calls. Did I ignore them & continue to say the name wrong? No. Because I wanted to be right. I was even known to call up people to get it right. Even if it was just a public service announcement for a bake sale. And you need to verify that Connie Linkous is a real name, of a real person. Yes and yes. You could look it up.

Sports talkers don’t take criticism. Or correcting. They just continue to say words the way they like them said. Which is often the wrong way. They also never met a hackneyed phrase they couldn’t use ad nauseum. Then puke it back up & chew it again. You know, I admit I rarely used algebra since high school. But English? pretty much on a daily basis. Though I do like to employ the odd Latin saying. And French, I like French. Jock sniffers apparently think sports transcends precise speech. Not formal mind you, I am all for casual & natural sounding conversation. But pronounce the words correctly; especially if an amicus curiae sent an email with it spelled phonetically, you ahole.

Getting words jumbled up like Homer Simpson riding a donut high while on a 3 day drunk, is nothing compared to what sports talk radio does best. Taking the athlete they worshipped 24 hours ago & exposing him ( occasionally her ) as a loser. What they really mean is, how could he let us down—we are so hurt, and as they are warriors ( LOL ) they will understand why we must attack them, shooting from the hip, lip & bloated body parts from media buffets. Burp—now back to bashing the Yankees/A Rod. . ..

Being from the Bronx, the Yankees were not only my hometown team, they were the first sports entity I ever knew about. That was long ago and far away. The player I most revered & emulated, was controversial beginning to end. The only time I wavered, I was 13 and learned he not only smoked but drank beer ( and more as it turned out ). But just like I did with my father, it didn’t take long to forgive Mickey Mantle for his flaws. After all, all he’d ever done for me was deliver the goods. He was human, just like me. The hero part was my lucky bonus.

Mickey caught plenty of heat, sports talk radio was flexing it’s muscles in the early 90’s. When Mickey stood up & admitted he was dying, and that his self destructive choices were the kind he regretted and sincerely hoped no other would make. Not a chance on the latter Mick, but a lot of people respected you for saying it. I guess Alex Rodriguez was busy playing in the toy box that day. Around the horn, and voila! it was his turn in the barrel.

Men like Mantle & Alex Rodriguez are built larger than life. Then there are people with the ability & means to make them even larger. The overriding reason for that is not altruism. It is profit & to some extent, reflected glory. Humanity, especially the sports media, has the nasty habit of putting athletes on precarious pedestals. Then, like vultures circle, until the time is right to dive & feed.

The New York Yankees and by dint of that, their all star ( Yankees are his third team ), Alex Rodriguez, are the evergreen whipping boys of sports talk. Even after O.J. went from slashing his way down a football field to just slashing humans, the black athlete was sacrosanct. Until one day, Barry Bonds, a guy most of the jock media loved to hate, became indirectly responsible for two reporters getting jail time. They had some privileged info about illegal steroid production & suppliers, involving Mr. Bonds, and refused to reveal their source. Bingo—Barry be bad, open season on him. Then asocial thugs like Terrell Owens, Adam Pacman Jones & Plaxico Burress, ad nauseum. Old news, they have ” A Roid ” in their sights now. Along with that group of tables with all the food laid out on them. That’s more emmis w/cheese. . ..

Both the Major League Baseball teams from NYC are catching heat. Steroids? no. The stadiums? no, not this week. It’s patches. Patches? yes.

Let’s get the Mets out of the way first. The myopic and short-sighted, jockocracy, in their 12 year old boy way of using broad strokes, has roundly ridiculed the Mets new ballpark patch. They claim it looks ” just like ” the Domino’s Pizza box logo. Um, sure it is a 4 sided geometric shape, canted at about a 60º angle. But a moron can see the Met patch is the shape of a baseball game ticket, and elegantly simple in both color scheme ( not the Domino colors, for sure ) and graphics. Likely this eludes what passes for ” observant ” by jock sniffers. Maybe they were hoping for a patch in the shape of the new stadium? No, because, the Yankees did do something like that—a patch which appears on the back of their 2009 cap.

A cap, which other than the new Yankee Stadium commemorative, looks like every @#%&*! NYY cap since about 1929. Except for the one thing, the critics are too scared to complain about. ( BTW the Yankee patch also looks just fine. It is in the shape of the famous Yankee RF frieze. Ooooooh, but it’s on the back. Give me a fucking break. ) That thing would be what the official cap shape has devolved into over the last few seasons. The NewEra company manufactures most of MLB’s wear, the game cap style is the model 5950. It has adopted the hip-hop thug look. The one which most resembles a tin pot, once styled by Johnny Appleseed. A certain kind of player enjoys an oversized look & uncurved brim on their dome. Hey, they’re the pros. Lame look, though.

Why aholes with the common sense of a slow 2 year old, can literally reshape what was developed to be functional headwear for athletes who once played in the sun for 3 hours, is foolish. Most of them also wear jewelry and necklaces while playing now. It’s astonishing their accessorizing, would’ve not only gotten baseball players from my era extra wind sprints, after practice, but asskicked by the football players. And the chess club.

Look, if a segment of the population thinks they are sticking it to the man by wearing ballcaps sideways, fine. Their fashion sense, born of too large hand me downs from their big brothers ( except for Tyler Perry—he got his from his sister ), embracing their tight clothing budgets. But what are baseball players, who all make at least 350K USD ( upwards to 25+ million ) rebelling against? possibly bad patches! Manny Ramirez who is still unsigned as of this post, might actually be wearing his pajamas everyday this season, instead of on the field. You used to see baseball socks, now these jags have pants tailored to drape over the back heel of their cleats. It really looks stupid. Also, I guess it’s for guys like Manny who rarely actually do more than stroll. Maybe I was wrong about the mispronunciation of the word athlete. These guys are ath-uh-leets; a hole ( sic ) new breed.

AS for Manny, he’s still not feeling the love of a decent contract offer. He started out by stating just after the 2008 season ended— ” gas is up, and so am I. . ..” Did anyone point out to him, the price of gasoline had dropped? A lot. Or that there was a major economic recession? I’m not worried about Manny’s wallet, his agent is Scott Boras. Everybody in baseball hates him. Yet he still gets most of his players amazing contracts. Boras is concerned about deflation dollars in 2010. Manny has always wanted to skip Spring Training. Stay tuned LA. [ Manny has now signed for 2K9 Dodger $]

The sports commentators need to learn to target the real problems like Bud Selig not Alex Rodriguez. Or the ruination of on field utilitarian clothing for fashion statements ( and illiterate ones at that )! No, they are too chicken shit to bite the hand that feeds them. They may laugh up their sleeves at patches which look like fast food logos to their ill-trained eyes. But slap some free pizzas down and they’ll be there faster than you can say it.